8 
GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 
Fathers and mothers are the ones who appreciate what 
gardens do for children. They deplore the flabby, dependent 
attitude of young folks toward tasks, whether these have 
been set at home or at school. To be sure, they do not ex- 
press this in educational "lingo,” but they say, "Our chil- 
dren have no gumption,” or, "They are so indifferent and 
blase!' Parents grumble at the schools, — who could help it ? 
But they finally acknowledge that school is not wholly to 
blame, and that really the general aimlessness of boys and 
girls is one of the inevitable evils of town life. Men and 
women of country stock themselves, perhaps, remembering 
the zest of their own childhood, with its wholesome duties 
and simple pleasures, are perplexed over the folly of chain- 
ing up a child on the one hand or letting him loose in the 
city streets on the other. They try to remedy the difficulty 
in various ways. The father of a handful of growing boys, 
when this problem forced itself upon him, deliberately trans- 
ferred his business from the city to a country town in Mas- 
sachusetts, where he bought a small farm and raised — 
chiefly his family. He knew he must pay in a multitude of 
ways for this luxury; but he has got in return vigorous lads, 
in whom there has developed conspicuously the rare stuff 
called leadership. Again, a man occupying an important 
public office tells us that the year before his family moved 
into the country the doctor’s bills amounted to five hundred 
dollars. In the five years since, he has paid, all told., just 
six dollars. 
Parents who cannot move out of the city have tried to com- 
promise by sending their children to some out-of-town day 
school or, at stated intervals, to some teacher of gardening in 
the suburbs. A successful instructor ^ has taught a number 
of such pupils. One mother has accompanied her little 
1 In Watertown, Massachusetts. 
